President Bush announced Friday that press secretary Tony Snow, who has waged a battle with cancer while manning the White House lectern, will resign and be replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino, on Sept. 14.

“It’s been joy to watch him spar with you,” Bush told the White House press corps in the briefing room.

Snow, who had said recently that he would leave before the end of Bush’s presidency, said cancer was not the reason he was stepping down. Instead, the father of three said he needs to make more than his White House salary of $168,000. He can earn far more money on the speechmaking circuit.

It must be tough being paid so little to lie for a living. He did it for quite a time though . . .

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.

Iraqhas failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

But most interesting:

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version — as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

It is sad that no one can trust the government. It is also sad that the government doesn’t realize that the truth might actually be more useful than their dreamed up bull shit.

For every intelligent book you, the reader, might read, millions of other readers occupy themselves with titles such as Aliens are Among Us! or Protect Yourself from Emotional Abuse, and that is, if they read at all. . . Don DeLillo echoes this sentiment when he writes, “If serious reading dwindles to nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we’re talking about when we use the word ‘identity’ has reached an end.”

In Morris Berman’s book The Twilight of American Culture, he discusses, among other things, the collapse of American intelligence. It’s a remarkably interesting and depressing read. I highly recommend it.

Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection from suffering. Its technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the picture of the real world in a delusional manner — which presupposes an intimidation of the intelligence. At this price, by forcibly fixing them in a state of psychical infantilism and by drawing them into a mass-delusion, religion succeeds in sparing many people an individual neurosis. But hardly anything more. There are, as we have said, many paths which may lead to such happiness as is attainable by men, but there is none which does so for certain. Even religion cannot keep its promise. If the believer finally sees himself obliged to speak of God’s ‘inscrutable decrees’, he is admitting that all that is left to him as a last possible consolation and source of pleasure in his suffering is an unconditional submission. And if he is prepared for that, he could probably have spared himself the détour he has made.

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

And this from the party that was up in arms about Clinton lieing about a blowjob.

And what ever happened to the republican party being the party of strong moral values?

But what scares me most is that all this has been going on and the republicans still enjoy a large supporter base. WTF?